Video game preview: Crackdown 2

When I first fired up my review copy of Crackdown 2 I was impressed my first task wasn’t to kill a gang boss.

That feeling soon gave way to boredom when I realized the redundancy of killing gang bosses and lower level thugs was replaced with activating beacons, taking over tactical locations, and securing “amplifiers”.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the first Crackdown. I bought it with my own money, not just to get into the Halo 3 beta, but because it looked completely awesome and was a brand new open-world experience. What really got me was how the game gave you a tangible sense of progression with your skills and how powerful it made you feel.

Oh, and those orbs!

Ruffian Games / Microsoft Game Studios

The visual progression of skills, be it the agility orbs making your agent taller, uglier, or more bad-ass combined with cars that transformed before your very eyes both in appearance and ability based on your driving skills was a huge boon to me. I could actually see how far I’d come since I started playing.

Crackdown 2 has none of that.

Why? Who knows. So much of the game feels inconsequential and stripped down, I’m curious as to what developer Ruffian Games was doing for the past few years besides make the once bright and colorful Pacific City ugly and brown.

Upon starting the game for the first time you’re given the choice of four faces for your agent. Which one you pick doesn’t matter at all because once you grab your first few agility orbs your character dons a full-face helmet, never to be seen again.

Seeing the rooftops of Pacific City littered with green orbs again was like, well, a crack-head seeing crack on every corner. After seven hours, I’ve amassed 230 out of 500 agility orbs and 20 out of 300 hidden orbs. The draw of being able to jump higher, run faster, and fall further is too much for me to not want to collect ‘em all. But, as I said earlier, there’s no visual progression.

Ruffian Games / Microsoft Game Studios

I haven’t had a chance to do any co-opping, but in an added twist there’s orbs scattered around the city available only when you’re blowing crap to hell with friends. Additionally, there are renegade orbs scattered through the city. Not content to stay in one place, you’ve gotta chase after these with separate ones for agility and driving. They break up the traditional orb-hunting pace quite a bit and I really dig them.

As far as driving goes, I’ve stuck to the roofs or simply extracted, read: killed myself and respawned at a different location closer to where I wanted to go, as a means of travel. Unlike its predecessor, you unlock a series of progressively more powerful cars instead of the starter cars transforming to reflect your abilities. For example, the Agency cruiser no longer changes into an almost Batmobile-esque ride with turrets popping out of the front fenders when you max out your driving skill. Instead, it remains static and you simply unlock the Agency super-car after progressing a few levels.

If it weren’t for how the cars changed in the first game, I would never have maxed out my driving skill.

Until I’ve had some time with multiplayer I can’t give a definitive opinion on Crackdown 2, but right now it feels like a definite rental. You could just skip it all together and grab the first game instead – it’s cheaper, more colorful, and a lot more fun. Hell, you can even buy a friend a copy and do some co-opping with them for less than what it will cost you to play the sequel by yourself.

You can find me on Twitter, too, I'm @timseppalaAnd now for something completely different

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